Streamlining a Small Kitchen in Three Easy Steps

When I think of my dream kitchen, I think of tons of counter space, endless cabinets for storage, a huge walk-in pantry– the works! Most of us, however, are working with a lot less space, and though this might not be ideal, there are ways to make it work with a few organizational strategies and a little creativity.

We currently live in a three bedroom townhouse that we will keep as a rental property when we move into a bigger home in the near future. We would have liked to completely overhaul the kitchen, but since we knew we weren’t going to live here long-term, we decided against it. We painted the walls and cabinets and changed out some hardware, but that’s about all we did to the space.

My dream kitchen it is not, but it meets our needs for now, and we are very thankful for that. The cabinets you see, along with a teeny tiny pantry (we’re talking 9.5″ deep and 24″ wide–miniscule!) are all I had to work with when organizing all of our kitchen “stuff,” so I had to pare down, get creative, and make the best of it. I have been pleasantly surprised at how well we’ve been able to make it work by just keeping it simple.

While getting the kitchen organized, I followed three little rules:

1. Purge, Purge, Purge!

If you don’t NEED it, get rid of it. There are tons of fun little kitchen gadgets out there, but the longer I cook, the more I realize I really only need the basics. A good knife can take the place of my slap-chopper, the cheese slicer, the egg slicer, and many other items. I got rid of doubles. I pitched things I hadn’t used in the past year. Everybody’s “need” list will be different, but chances are there are at least three kitchen accessories you could pitch today and you would never miss them.

If it doesn’t work well, get rid of it. I think the C’s owned every sippy cup known to man. I found myself avoiding some of them and never using others because they leaked or had too many parts, so I just threw those ones away. {Mommy tip: Be sure to do this when they’re not looking. Otherwise, loud tantrums will ensue over cups they never even used in the first place. :)} Clearly they still have enough cups to last the two of them several days, and I have room to store my cooling racks. Win-win!

If the cupboard looks like it deserves its own episode of Hoarders, clean it out. I have a slight obsession with storage containers. They call my name from the store shelves and I just have to buy them. There has to be something I can organize with every possible shape and size of container, right? Um, not so much. I pared down our container selection to a much more reasonable size, and am so much happier every time I go to store something.

If you don’t use it often, pack it away. There were a few things I only used once or twice a year, so I made a bin for them elsewhere. I knew, for example, that I only had room for the baking dishes that I could store in the little nooks beside my plates. I kept the ones I used most frequently and stored extras in a container in the basement for the rare occasion when we have a larger get-together.

So now that you’ve purged, purged, and purged some more, it’s time to…

2. Corral the Floating Items

Floating items {aka that stuff that’s always getting knocked around because it’s in the way} caused me a lot less frustration once I gave them their own space. I used to dread putting away leftovers after dinner because my tupperware lids were all over the place. Then one day I got the *genius* idea to put all the lids together and my life was forever changed. {Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I was really excited about it. I even texted a picture of it to hubby at work. Am I crazy? Maybe, but at least my tupperware lids are neat and tidy!}

Note: Don’t feel the need to spend big bucks on containers to organize your kitchen stuff! Most of the bins I use are repurposed from other projects or purchased at the dollar store. You can even make your own bins out of cereal boxes using this adorable tutorial by Jen from I Heart Organizing.

3. Think Outside the Box– Get Creative!

As I mentioned previously, our pantry is tiny. Add to the mix an overly-curious 18-month old who insists on emptying all shelves within his reach, and our pantry space became really minimal. {Notice the bottom shelf sitting completely empty! Ugh!}

We lived with this for a while, but pretty soon I couldn’t take our lack of space anymore. Our front entry just happens to be across from the kitchen, so I decided to convert half of our closet space into an extra pantry area. This allowed me to keep my Crock Pot and Kitchen Aid upstairs instead of lugging them up from the basement every time I needed them {yay!} AND I gained additional food storage space.

Even if you don’t have a spare closet close by, there are creative ways you can add storage to your kitchen– bring in a rolling cart, add a piece of storage furniture in your dining area, make your kids carry around your extra kitchen stuff on their backs… {Okay, don’t really do that last one.}

My point is that small kitchens are a challenge, but they’re definitely not impossible. A few small changes and a little creativity can make a BIG difference. I find that when my kitchen is more “user-friendly,” I’m more likely to spend time in it, and my family definitely benefits from that!

Wow! That’s a wonderful transformation! Makes your kitchen look so much more spacious and brighter. Did you pain the inside of your cabinets? How long did it take you guys to do all the painting? I’m inspired 🙂

Thanks, Sonia! You are the sweetest. We did it over a period of about a week when we first moved in. There was lots of “paint…wait for it to dry…paint…wait for it to dry.” We painted the insides of the doors, but not the insides of the cabinets themselves since they were already white. Someday I’d like to paint inside the cabinets too–add it to the never ending to-do list! 🙂 Thanks for reading!

Lucky you that it was already white :D. I was showing my husband your pantry pictures, we like the shelving and want to make something similar with the closet right outside of our kitchen. I love your blog, keep up the fantastic job!

A few years ago, we lived in an apartment that had literally ZERO storage space in the kitchen. And when I say zero – I mean if it didnt go in the fridge, there was no where to put it.

Luckily, the kitchen was by the front door of the apartment and right outside that front door was a storage closet (which was pretty huge) – so, in order to cook anything – you had to physically leave the apartment to get pots, pans, utensils and ingredients.

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